 Lesbian entertainer Rosie O'Donnell generated headlines when she declared that "radical Christianity" was "just as threatening as radical IslamÂ…" That's completely absurd, of course, as demonstrated by the violent Islamic reaction to the Pope's simple historical observation about violent Jihad. But it's not a unique view.
| It's a stupid view — "stupid" in this case being used not in a name-calling sense, but as a mere guage of the statement's intellectual content. |
Don't forget the April 17 column by James Reston, Jr. on the "American Inquisition," in which he alleged that President Bush's Christian faith required that dissenters to the war on terrorism be treated as heretics. Reston, a journalist and author, is the son of the famous former New York Times editor James Reston.
| Yasss... I can recall when Reston the Elder was burned at the stake... Ummm... No. Maybe I can't. |
America is "seized with collective paranoia," he wrote in USA Today, and Bush is using the terrorism problem as a "powerful deterrent to dissent and a useful tool for consolidating political power." He said this "American inquisition" uses "secret police" instead of the "Holy Brotherhood" but the result is still the same.
| We're five years into a war againt people who chop infidels' heads off, who kidnap theaters and schools full of people, including little kiddies, and kill them. They've announced over and over their antipathy to everything we stand for, to include drinking beer and bowling. But to subgeniuses like Reston it's all about domestic politix and collective paranoia. I don't like standing close to people with that sort of thought process. I'm always afraid I'll step in the end result of their mental masturbation. |
If this is the case, it's a strange kind of inquisition, in which Reston writes such articles for the most widely circulated paper in the country. Why isn't this heretic in prison?
| My guess is that it's because he's beneath the notice of the latter day Torquemadas. |
Suggesting that America today resembles a theocratic state, he explained, "How different is this really from the spying that went on in the Spanish Inquisition? Suspect words or acts do not change that much with time. In Inquisitional Spain, neighbors were supposed to report a suspicious neighbor to the Holy Office. Now, symbolic words or actions are detected electronically." More recently, during an interview on National Public Radio, Reston asserted that U.S. officials have misrepresented the concept of the Islamic caliphate as a threatening stance by Arabs.
| I'm waiting to hear him describe how there's really nothing wrong with chopping infidels' heads off. |
Such views are treated as wisdom by the major media. During an appearance on Face the Nation, November 27, 2005, Reston declared that "on September the 16th, we had-just five days after September 11th, Bush proclaimed his crusades." He implied that Bush intended this to be a Christian crusade. In fact, Bush's statement was, "This crusade, this war on terrorism is gonna take awhile. And the American people must be patient. I'm gonna be patient." Clearly, he meant "crusade" in the sense of a military campaign against terrorism. He did not advocate, as Ann Coulter did, that America go into these countries and forcibly convert the people into Christians. There was no religious connotation to the statement at all.
| This is what's known as a deliberate misinterpretation to further one's own ends. The Moose limbs made the same deliberate misinterpretation, and for the same reason. Curiously, the Christian "crusade" could also be defined as a "holy war" — or "jihad." |
In fact, Bush has been criticized for not insisting on enough Western-style rights in Afghanistan and Iraq, where U.S. experts have played a role in their adoption of new constitutions. Both countries, despite U.S. influence, still recognize Islamic law as supreme.
| The greatest gift we could have given both countries would have been to impose our constitution on them. To hell with letting them try to write their own from scratch. |
Rather than Bush making Muslims angry with his rhetoric, writers like James Reston, Jr. have done so by exaggerating and distorting what Bush said. Bush has repeatedly insisted, despite evidence to the contrary, that Islam is a religion of peace.
| That's a patently goofy statement that I've heard approximately 24 times too many by now. Bush is also backing away from its repetition, which is how he's come to discover the concept of Islamist fascism, which is not a goofy concept. The next step will be to acknowledge, in a loud, clear voice, that we are in fact at war with the takfir ideology, its adherents and practitioners. |
Reviewing one of Reston's books, Warriors of God: Richard the Lionheart and Saladin in the Third Crusade, historian Michael Pedrotty declared, "Reston apparently desired to avoid a Western bias in his account, and in this he has certainly succeeded. If anything, he seems to prefer his Muslim subjects, and his treatment of the Christians as a whole is generally pejorative in tone. The Christians are the aggressors in his drama, they are less civilized, less religious, more greedy, and more savage."
| That's been a pretty regular theme for the past 50 years or so in lit'rature, whether it's in revisionist history or in potboilers like Shogun. The assumption is that the Mysterious East or the Frozen North or the Noble Savage is better than us crassly commercial Westerners. This attitude never bothers to explain why they drop like flies from things like cholera and we don't. |
Reston is a hack writer whose Fragile Innocence, about coping with a terrible medical condition that afflicted his disabled child, was widely praised. His theme was that his child had a right to a decent quality of life. It's just tragic that, in the great struggle between Islam and the West, he fails to see that all of our lives are at risk.
| It's indicative of a lack of imagination. Just ignore him. Come the caliphate somebody'll kill him for Islamic fun. |
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